Eight TV Shows with Queer Women Characters Coming This Fall

Out comic Fortune Feimstermade a guest appearance as Dougie on Season 1 of the hit CBS series, but when she returns in Season 2, she’ll be questioning her sexuality.

“She’s playing a sexually confused character and we’re building an arc where she comes out of the closet,” creator Justin Adler told TV Insider. “The women, Heather (Betsy Brandt) and Jen (Zoe Lister-Jones) and Colleen are going to take her out to a gay bar and try to meet somebody so we’re super excited to explore that side of things.”

Fortune will also appear in the season premiere and several other episodes this season, as she’s moving in with Matt (Thomas Sadoski) and Colleen (Angelique Cabral).

Red Oaks (Amazon, November 11)via Amazon

In Season 1 of Red Oaks, a brief reference is made that Jennifer Grey‘s character, Judy Meyers, is “a lesbian… or I guess technically bisexual.” Later, she seems to take a liking to her yoga teacher and wonders if she’s been living an unfulfilled life.

Season 2 takes this idea and runs with it because now that Judy’s marriage is on its way out and her children are grown and no longer seem to need her, she’s ready to explore who she really is.

“For me, this whole season was about Judy Meyers figuring out who she is after 22 years of being in a like, in a time machine. It’s like she comes out, and, like, the world is different than it was when she became a mother and a wife,” Jennifer said during the Red Oaks panel. “…And not knowing if it’s just this marriage that she wasn’t into, or maybe it’s not maybe it’s not men, or maybe it’s just a different man, or maybe it’s a woman. And because it’s then, not now, and because she came from a time when it wasn’t okay to be gay, and it’s just like it’s just so new, the idea of what that is, that nothing she has ever explored.”

Comic Beth Stelling guest stars as Judy’s new friend and possible love interest, because things don’t quite work out with the yoga teacher.

“I would say that I’m kind of tiptoeing into territory of the lesbian community, unsure, not sure if I want that, I don’t want that,” Jennifer told AfterEllen. “And the woman who I was interested in last year, the yoga teacher, she is unavailable–which you’ll see why when this season resumes, because I left too much time between. So she takes out me out with friends and they want to introduce me to different girls. It’s kind of going from being a New Jersey housewife to a karaoke gay club with a bunch of lesbians who are, like, licking their lips!”